The Air Force Pilot

We’ve been getting some outstanding speakers here at the continuum care complex as part of our Life Enrichment Program. Our latest was a pilot of an F-105 Thunderchief during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant James DeVoss’s plane was shot down during a bombing-run over Laos in 1969 and he was rescued by a group of para-rescue jumpers who found him on his back in a bamboo patch with bamboo shoots impaling him so he couldn’t move and he suffered numerous injuries caused by being ejected from the plane. “His left arm shattered, both hips were dislocated and his knees were separated. In the right knee, every tendon, every piece of cartilage, every ligament was completely torn apart. One nerve; one blood vessel with some skin around it, was all that remained to keep his lower leg alive. Another 8th of an inch, it would have ripped apart, and he would have bled to death." (Quote from a USA Today article.) We had a genuine purple heart recipient and highly decorated pilot in front of us.

For first half hour of his talk he described in great detail the training that Air Force pilots go through, not only on how to fly and how to eject from an aircraft that’s malfunctioning but he also described the training pilots get on how to survive behind enemy lines and how survive being a POW. Up until this point we didn't know about him getting shot out of the sky and my cynical side was thinking, This old guy is here to relive his glory days. But then he switched from talking about training to showing a film of his plane getting shot down and the rescue that followed and it started sinking in---how much this man had suffered through and survived. 

The para-rescue jumpers had done many missions like that one before but for some reason the Air Force decided to make a documentary of one of them and his rescue was the one that got filmed. It was that footage that the lieutenant was able to show us. I’ve never been a gun-ho supporter of the military but watching and listening to this man I gained a real appreciation for the sacrifice, courage and training pilots in the Air Force go through to serve our country.

My Mahjong teacher and her husband both served in the Air Force and sat next to me at the lecture. There were five or six others in the room who’d also been in the Air Force so you can image the quality of the questions that were asked during the Q & A part of the lecture. I asked if he’s flown planes after his years-long recovery and he did---not in the Air Force but he got certificated in some civilian crafts and taught for awhile. Afterward some of us where talking in the lobby and one woman said she wanted to ask if he had any mental therapy to deal with PTSD but she didn’t dare, felt it was too personal, and I remarked that I’ll bet doing talks like this probably helps with that and the chronic pain his wife said he still has to this day. 

But I was probably wrong. After finding him online I discovered that in 2017 he was inducted into the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame and because of the “enshrined results” of that honor (research done) he became a Motivational Speaker. His presentation wasn’t born out of a need to tell his story but rather out of a renewed sense of wonder that he survived at all. Somewhere on his website he says he’s sharing his story to say “thanks for my everything” to the men who saved him.

Given all the crazy stuff going on in our country I don’t feel very proud of the U.S.A. right now so this was the perfect lecture to see the week of the Fourth of July. It gave me a little of that pride back again....if only temporarily. ©

Holiday Weekends, Skin Cancer and Messy Closets

The Fourth of July weekend seemed to last forever here at the continuum care complex. Except for one security guard none of the staff worked Sunday and Monday in the independent living section of the campus so they packed all kinds of Red, White and Blue activities on the calendar both last week and this week including a lecture given by an Air Force Pilot (my next post), four therapy horses who came to accept all the petting they could get, a pickle ball tutorial exhibition on our new pickle ball court, an outdoor movie that got moved inside at the last minute because it didn’t get dark enough at 7:00---Duh! Who planned that? A five year old who goes to bed at 6:30? We also had two piazza parties and for food we could order and pick that up on Saturday to eat on Sunday and Monday because even our food services were shut down. On the fifth they threw an outdoor cookout of traditional holiday foods---hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad and ice cream. Every day they served an alcoholic drink that layered itself in red, white and blue. Some days they were free, other days just $2.00. They wanted to get us drunk and keep us that way. Or so it seems.

In addition to all that, the ‘in crowd’ here put together a picnic for those of us who are widows and not going anywhere on the Fourth. I was invited and was told to bring grapes. Yup, a bowl of grapes which in order to get more than one kind cost me $14. The cost of food in the stores these day still shocks me. I really didn’t want to bring them because I’ve never seen anyone eat grapes at a party, opting instead for the gooey desserts and salty snacks while the fruit and veggie trays barely get touched. I visualized me coming home with a mountain of grapes nearly as tall as I took to the party and then I’d have to watch them rot away in my refrigerator because I’m not that fond of them unless they come in the form of raisins. Apparently I was stressing out about this because after buying them I woke up in the middle of the night to pee and as I walked back to bed the thought that I could freeze any left over grapes popped in my head. I solve a lot of problems on my walks back to bed in the middle of the night. No wonder I never feel rested in the mornings. I ended up bringing some baggies with me and strong-armed as many people as I could to take some grapes home. But I still ended up with enough grapes to last the summer in my freezer. 

I’m writing this while sitting on the piazza giving myself skin cancer because I’m not as smart one of our four adult swans on the lake. She’s hanging out under the bridge with her two remaining babies where its shady.  Speaking of skin cancer the biopsy the dermatologist did in June on the mole that I thought was a tick turned out to be a “hperthropic actinic keratitis” which I was told are precancerous, slow growing cells that can turn into squamous cell carcinomas, a type of skin cancer that rarely kills a person if treated early. Supposedly the doctor got it all and I have nothing to worry about except a gaping hole the size of a pencil eraser surrounded by an angry red patch of skin the size of a quarter. 

I wondered if swans get skin cancers and after googling the question I learned that birds do get squamous cell carcinomas around their eyes and beaks. How in the heck do they stay out of the sun if they don’t have a bridge to hide under? I’ve had dogs with cancerous growths so I’m guessing anything with living cells can get these “mutations.” If you want to scare yourself into buying sunscreen google images of cutaneous horn moles (photo above). In the dark ages before doctors understood much about anything it’s easy to see how people with ‘horns’ growing out of their heads were the stuff of folklore and fear.  

New Topic: I am running out of room in my closet. I need to purge stuff because I bought a few new things and there is no room left or hangers to use for a Landend’s sweater and a pair of Women Within pants nor room left in my underwear drawer for some great panties made out of bamboo. I had every intention of throwing out at least six pairs of panties that are so worn out I’d be embarrassed to be caught dead in them but there’s always something else going on I’d rather do. It dawned on me over the Fourth hat I’m not really living here yet. Yes, it’s been eight months since I moved in but I still feel like I’m on a cruise ship with a schedule to explore if I want to have fun and get fed. I need to make time for normal things cleaning drawers and purging closets. Even though my world has gotten smaller since I moved to this CCC I still can’t have it all. No one can. I need to make choices, prioritize and quit drifting with the wind like I'm going to kick the bucket any day now. I need goals. I need doable goals and the willpower to carry them out. ©

Music that Comes with Tears and Laughter

I’ve got to stop listening to old music from the ‘50s through the ‘80s. Once a month they have a birthday party here at the continuum care complex to celebrate everyone who was born in that particular month and the party usually includes a singer/musician. Many have been singer/song writers both young and old and they have something else in common. They try to sing songs fitting the age of our residents. One guy missed the mark and did too many songs from the ‘40s which on paper to a young person probably sounded good since most of us were born in the ‘40s but the music most old seniors like us identify with is the decade of songs from when we were teenagers and young adults. The ‘50s and ‘60s songs usually have us all singing along and having a great time. And I can have as much fun singing as the next person but those songs often make me teary-eyed as well. 

For example when the guy above in the photo ---John D. Lamb sang “Each night I ask the stars up above why must I be a teenager in love?” I felt like I was right back in high school, encamped in my converted attic bedroom with the pink cabbage roses in the wallpaper. I’d lay on my moss green carpet and play that record over and over again until my mom would yell up from the bottom of the steps for me to, 'Turn that damn thing off." I learned it from her---playing records over and over again the way she did when I was a toddler. She had a collection of WWII records that she played over and over again. The Andrew Sisters singing the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy is tattooed inside my head. 

I can’t hear a WWII, gun-ho-to-support-the-war song without remembering the day my dad and I cleaned out our basement and we took her record collection to the dump. We had a good time sailing those records across the field of garbage and trash. She hadn’t played them in years but she was so mad when she found out what we did that it took her a week before she spoke to either one of us. As an adult looking back I know there was a story there I’m missing, probably a love story about a boyfriend who joined the Air Force and never came back. She had a pair silver U.S. Air Force wings in her jewelry box and a photo of her with a guy she dated before my dad that she never talked about or rather I was too self-centered to ask about. Mom’s are moms. We don’t see their lost dreams the way we see our own.

At the same birthday party John D. Lamb also sang Anta Lucia in Italian. His ancestry is Italian like my dad’s was and hearing that love song sang that way reached so far back into my memory vault I had nearly forgotten about all the Italian weddings I’d been to as a young kid. My three great uncles were still alive and they spoke their native tongue and always sang that song to the bride while one or two of them played the accordion.

Another song that nearly brought me to tears was the theme song from Ghost. Remember Demi Moore’s character at a potter’s wheel while Patrick Swayze’s character/the ghost was behind her and the theme song played: “...I've hungered for your touch, A long, lonely time, And time goes by so slowly, And time can do so much, Are you still mine?” Corny, I know but to quote a line from The Holiday “I like corny.” I liked it enough that day to have trouble holding back the tears. But I did. 

Until John D. Lamb pulled out a Tom Jones song. I’ve told the story before but briefly its of the triangle dating thing I had going between me, Don and his friend who looked like he shared the same gene pool as Tom Jones. His first name was even Tom and he was playboy type who took full advantage of looking like the famous singer. “It's not unusual to be loved by anyone, It's not unusual to have fun with anyone’, but when I see you hanging about with anyone, It's not unusual to see me cry, I wanna die.” It was Don who had the staying power, as long time readers here know, who wanted to cry when he saw me out with the Tom Jones look-alike. Cornball, I know but it's my story and I'll tell it the way I want.

At lunch the next day someone remarked that I was having a good time at the birthday party, that she was sitting behind me and could see me getting into the music. “I was,” I told her, “but along with the happiness I fought back a few tears. Old music does that to me.” Others at the table said the same thing happened to them at this birthday party. So either John D. Lamb knew how to play to his audience or all of us had our emotions close too the surface that day and our tears needed a place to escape. I suspect it was a combination of both because the world outside that room, was filled with nothing but bad news. All I really know for sure is by the time the hour was up I was crushing on John D. Lamb and I left in a better mood than I came.  ©

The video below is of John singing a song he wrote about two friends who went to the capital January 6th. He didn't sing this at the party but I love how song writers can turn anything into music. He holds an annual Retreat for Song Writers and is on his 28th year doing so. The second video is a humorous song he wrote and did sing for us. It's for all of us who know what it's like to drive up north in Michigan.

Laughing in all the Wrong Places

 

Look Out for Deer